The Governor of the Province, not understanding the situation in the remote settlements, made an attempt to enforce order and compel obedience to law by sending an officer with full discretionary power against the Regulators. The course of events is described by Ramsay in the following words: “The extreme difficulty of bringing criminals from the remote settlements to a legal condemnation had induced a number of men, who called themselves regulators, to take the law into their hands. They, by their own authority, inflicted corporal punishment on sundry persons without any regular condemnation. To remedy abuses of this kind, lord Charles Greville Montague, then governor of the province, advanced to the rank of colonel a man of low character, of the name of Scovil, and employed him to enforce regular law among these self-constituted regulators. In execution of his commission he adopted severe measures, which involved multitudes in great distress.”[[86]] This Colonel Scovil (or Schovel—his name is written in various ways), instead of redressing the grievances on both sides, armed the depredators and paraded them for battle. Before a battle took place, however, between the Regulators and the Schofilites, as they were known from the name of their leader, wiser counsels prevailed and both parties sent delegates to the Governor asking for his intervention.[[87]] In this way the disastrous results of the conflict in North Carolina between the Regulators and the Government were avoided in South Carolina.
Finally, the necessity for courts in the interior of the Province could no longer be denied. The Royal approval was given, and in the year 1769 seven new courts, with suitable jails and court-houses, were established in different parts of the interior.[[88]] This marked the end of the Regulation movement in South Carolina. The condition of affairs which had called it into existence had ceased to prevail and the practice of “regulating” was, therefore, discontinued.
A single quotation will conclude all that need here be said in regard to the Regulation in South Carolina. It is an “extract of a letter from a Gentleman at Pedee, to his friend in Town,” and appeared in the South Carolina Gazette, September 2, 1768. It reads as follows:
“I wish you would inform me what is generally thought in town of the Regulators, who now reign uncontrolled in all the remote parts of the Province. In June, they held a Congress at the Congarees, where a vast number of people assembled; several of the principal settlers on this River, men of property, among them. When these returned, they requested the most respectable people in these parts to meet on a certain day; they did so, and, upon the report made to them, they unanimously adopted the Plan of Regulation, and are now executing it with indefatigable ardour. Their resolution is, in general, effectually to deny the Jurisdiction of the Courts holden in Charlestown over those parts of the Province that ought to be by right out of it; to purge, by methods of their own, the country of all idle persons, all that have not a visible way of getting an honest living, all that are suspected or known to be guilty of malpractices, and also to prevent the service of any writ or warrant from Charlestown; so that a Deputy Marshal would be handled by them with severity. Against those they breathe high indignation. They are every day, excepting Sundays, employed in this Regulation work, as they term it. They have brought many under the lash, and are scourging and banishing the baser sort of people, such as the above, with universal diligence.
“Such as they think reclaimable, they are a little tender of; and those they task, giving them so many acres to tend in so many days, on pain of flagellation, that they may not be reduced to poverty, and by that be led to steal from their industrious neighbours. This course, they say, they are determined to pursue, with every other effectual measure, that will answer their purpose; and that they will defend themselves in it to the last extremity. They hold correspondence with others in the same plan, and are engaged to abide by and support each other whenever they may be called upon for that purpose. This, it seems, they are to continue till County Courts, as well as Circuit Courts, shall be rightly established, that they may enjoy, by that means, the rights and privileges of British subjects, which they think themselves now deprived of. They imagine that, as the Jurisdiction of the Courts in Charlestown extends all over the Province, Government is not a protection, but an oppression; that they are not tried there by their Peers; and that the accumulated expenses of a law-suit, or prosecution, puts justice out of their power; by which means the honest man is not secure in his property, and villainy becomes rampant with impunity.
“Indeed, the grievances they complain of are many, and the spirit of Regulation rises higher and spreads wider every day. What this is to end in, I know not; but thus matters are situated; an account of which, I imagine, is not unacceptable, though perhaps disagreeable to hear.”[[89]]
This letter may be regarded, upon the whole, as an impartial account of the Regulation movement in South Carolina.[[90]] It exhibits the character of those who were taking the lead in the matter, and indicates the objects which they proposed to accomplish. It also indicates that their usual procedure was to whip and banish all persons whom they considered inimical to the interests of the community. In this respect the Regulation movement in South Carolina closely resembled the Regulation movement in North Carolina. It may be said, therefore, that lynch-law was in operation at this time in the Carolinas, though not known by that name. The practice of administering corporal punishment for reformatory or corrective purposes, the practice of “regulating” public offenders and public grievances, is the essence of lynch-law procedure.
As events shaped themselves for the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775, conditions became such as to encourage the frequent use of summary methods of redressing grievances in all of the colonies. The increasing dissatisfaction among the colonists with the way they were being governed by the mother country, the obnoxious Stamp Act and other measures which they thought to be unjustly imposed upon them, rendered recourse to summary procedure not only easy but popularly justifiable.[[91]] It was a time of excitement when neighbor looked upon neighbor with suspicion and the slightest offense was deemed worthy of severe punishment. Social conditions were unsettled; the civil authorities were fast losing the respect and support of the people in the community; threats and taunts, satire and insult, were prevalent.[[92]] Under such conditions it is not strange that summary procedure came to be in vogue from Maine to Georgia.
Furthermore, during the entire period of the Revolutionary War not only were the usual unsettled conditions incident to a war prevailing, but, in addition, there was disaffection and disagreement among the colonists themselves. Almost every community had its Tories who frequently sought, openly or secretly, to further the Royal cause and injure the American cause. In return, the American sympathizers often adopted retaliatory measures against the Tories. In such cases it was hopeless to appeal to the civil or the judicial powers for they were badly disorganized. Not infrequently conditions were such as to preclude action under martial law, and thus the only recourse possible was the popular administration of justice in the form of summary procedure of one sort or another.
Particularly characteristic of the Revolutionary period was the practice of tarring and feathering.[[93]] It has been said that “this singular punishment” was begun in America by British troops who tarred and feathered an inhabitant of the town of Billerica, Massachusetts, on March 9, 1775.[[94]] But a number of instances may be cited showing that this punishment had been administered in more than one of the colonies several years earlier. It is probable that many of the early immigrants knew of this manner of punishment before they left their native shores[[95]]; at any rate, they did not wait until 1775 for the British troops to set them an example.[[96]]